NIGEL NORTH
7-course lute by Malcolm Prior, after Sixtus Rauwolf, c. 1590
14-course theorbo by Klaus Jacobsen, after Mateo Sellas, c.1630
The ATTAIGNANT CONSORT was co-founded in 1998 by Kate Clark, Frédérique Chauvet, Marion Moonen and Marcello
Gatti. Mathieu Langlois joined the ensemble in 2008. Drawn together by a fascination with the renaissance flute, they have
collaborated over many years with the Italian flute-maker Giovanni Tardino, exploring the sound world of this, until now,
little-known instrument. The ensemble's work has been greatly enriched by their long-standing collaboration with distinguished English lutenist Nigel North, begun in 2007. Each of the musicians in the Attaignant Consort has a multi-facetted
musical career independent of the Consort: above all performers, their combined portfolios comprise outstanding achieve4

stead, these pieces were inventions within abstract
paradigms: freed from the bond to poetry, there was
no obstacle to abrupt changes of metre, tempo and
texture and there was free reign for virtuosic display.
Our first Fantasia here, by Bassano, is a polyphonic
piece in the old style, though its transparency of texture and pervading cheerful melodiousness give it
a freshness that sets it apart from most 16th-century
four-part fantasias. By contrast, Frescobaldi's Fantasia seconda of 1608 represents the opposite end of the
spectrum: it is a highly modern piece at the turn of the
17th century, ambitious in the length and number of
its sections, and most adventurous in its use of sliding
chromaticisms in the last section. It was conceived for
performance on a keyboard but printed on four different staves. It lends itself well to performance on four
separate instruments and indeed instrumentalists of
the day made use of any available vocal or keyboard
music that suited their purposes. Here the cylindrical
Renaissance flute is stretched to its absolute limit, for it
was an instrument never conceived to play chromatic
melodies. For the Attaignant consort it is perhaps the
most difficult piece we have ever attempted: from the
vantage point of this piece it is easy to predict the imminent demise of the cylindrical flute and, apart from
its masterful beauty, it is this that made this Frescobaldi fantasia an indispensible item in the programming of this CD.

LE PARLER ET LE SILENCE
This recording is the sequel to the Attaignant
Consort's first CD Madame d'amours and the third
and last in a three-part set of recordings capturing
the art of the Renaissance flute as both a solo and a
consort instrument from the late 15th to the mid-17th
centuries1. The disc focuses on the musical transition
to the 17th century and shows the flute consort adapting to new styles of composition that would take it to
the very limits of its capabilities.
The 17th century was a period in which polyphonic music lost its predominance as the central compositional idea and began to sound antiquated. The solo
voice and solo instrument gradually became increasingly important vehicles for musical expression. In ensembles of mixed voices and instruments, the writing
for instruments became more and more differentiated.
Rather than only double (or substitute entirely for) the
voices, they could be heard in orchestral preludes and
interludes and occasionally as obbligato solo instruments2. Increasingly instruments acquired their own
'voices' and a growing number of compositions were
dedicated to instruments alone. With retrospect one
can speak of the 'emancipation' of instruments.
In Italy, there was a flourishing of composition
for instruments. Fantasias and Canzonas no longer
needed explicitly to be inspired by pre-existing songs
(though their opening figures sometimes were). In-

In our second block we see the flute once again
in its customary role giving instrumental renditions
of vocal pieces. We present two of Jan Pieterszoon
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ture and mood for each new phrase it seems to capture
both steady devotion and true exaltation. The intensity
of musical expression shines out though the words are
not audible.

Sweelinck's delicate Rimes franĂ§oises. These are secular
pieces for two or three voices, written on light-hearted
French texts and set by Sweelinck to lively melodies
with playful rhythms. The two we have chosen are settings of poems focusing on the captivating power of a
woman's eyes, irresistible and tormenting, at the same
time. Though highly imitative, and consistent in their
use of other very familiar devices such as a melismatic
quickening of note values towards the end of most
phrases, each piece manages to surprise and deceive
one's expectations. Maverick rhythms, shifting emphases and abrupt changes of texture set them entirely
apart from the typical bicinia of the 16th century. They
reflect the influence of the madrigal and, incidentally,
fit perfectly on flutes. Sweelinck wrote them for performance by amateurs and indeed they were often
performed in his own house. It is our conviction that
all vocal music that was suitable in style and range for
instrumental performance remained equally the province of instrumentalists. Notwithstanding the developments outlined above, specifically instrumental repertoire grew only slowly, and players continued to rely on
vocal compositions for much of their material. Indeed,
early 17th-century treatises such as those by Praetorius
(1619) and Mersenne (1637) make it very plain that
instrumentalists played motets in mixed ensembles
of instruments and singers or instruments alone, and
Airs de Cour, all by themselves, just as they had done
throughout the 16th century. Sweelinck's magnificent
setting of the 9th psalm, De Tous mon CĹ&#x201C;ur j'exalteray
is a four-part polyphonic setting but its melodies are
lyrical and transcendent, and with its changes in tex-

The turn of the 17th century has been considered
a high point in English song writing. 'Madrigals' and
'Canzonets', Songs and 'Ayres' appeared contemporaneously. As elsewhere in Europe, the solo song was
emerging as a major musical form and touchstone of
composers' skill. Songs for a solo voice with lute accompaniment became immensely popular. Francis
Pilkington (among others) probably published his
Songs or Ayres of 1605 with both solo-voice and lute,
and ensemble versions in mind. The four parts are
laid out on the page in such a way that four singers
or players could sit around the four sides of one table,
and each would find his part facing him. The lute accompaniment is on the same side and disposition as
the soprano part. This facilitated performance by the
same performer, singing the song and accompanying
himself on the lute as well as performance by two people. Some English songs became the subject of sets of
diminutions for a melody instrument, such as Dowland's famous Flow my Teares (or Pavane Lachrime)
for which Jacob van Eyck wrote two sets of divisions
for recorder or flute, one of which may be heard on
our Madame d'amours CD.
The three fantasias in this English set are examples
of pieces conceived for instruments alone. All three are
highly imitative in their treatment of each melodic
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ensemble Air de Cour. These modern airs were largely
homophonic and often characterised by an artful asymmetry of phrasing. Rhythm was used to imitate the
natural lilt and emphases of spoken poetry, and punctuation was clearly marked by the simultaneous arrival
of all voices at each cadence, and a momentary silence
marking the spot. Like the English ayre, the Air de Cour
existed in both solo and ensemble forms. The solo Air
de Cour was well established in the 16th century (our
second recording contains one example by Thibaut de
Courville). Ensemble airs appear to have been a later
development and, certainly today, fewer examples of
them are readily available. Charles Tessier and Pierre
GuĂŠdron are the two best-known composers of these.
The genre was probably influenced by a certain ideal of
text setting known as musique mesurĂŠe Ă l'antique according to which long syllables should be matched by
a long note value (a minim) and short ones by a short
note value (a crotchet)4. This allowed the music to capture the rhythm of the spoken word, and, being sung by
a group in a homophonic setting, the result recalls the
effect of the chorus in Greek plays, where all speak as
one, yet the rhythm sounds natural and (paradoxically
enough) unmanipulated. It is this compelling effect of
the rhythms used that makes the pieces translate so well
into an instrumental rendition. For us, as instrumentalists coming from the tradition of 16th-century polyphony, these pieces have a remarkable declamatory effect.
They also require the whole range of the entire consort
to be used, from the lowest bass notes to the highest
descant register. In this respect they mark the limit of
the pitch-capabilities of the Renaissance flute consort.

figure. This was the central organising principle of the
Fantasia as a form. Morley provides a concise and delightful description of the manner of composing a fantasia ("the most principal and chiefest kind of music")
in which the freedom from any text is alluded to: "[...]
a musician taketh a point [subject or melodic figure]
at his pleasure and wresteth and turneth it as he list [as
he likes], making either much or little of it according
as shall seem best in his own conceit. In this may more
art be shown than in any other music because the composer is tied to nothing, but that he may add, diminish, and alter at his pleasure [... using devices such as]
bindings with discords [suspensions], quick motions,
slow motions, Proportions, and what you list"3.
Our three fantasias by Morley, Lupo and Gibbons
each make use of all the devices Morley mentions here.
'Proportion' meant changes of meter or pulse, whether
or not marked by an explicit change of time signature.
These changes brought not only variety but also the
division of the piece into little episodes, each of which
imports another mood. This partitioning was a device
common to both fantasias and canzonas. Ultimately
the sections grew longer and became the fully worked
out 'movements' of the instrumental sonata, which
was to become the main instrumental form of the late
17th and 18th centuries.
In France, the polyphonic chanson which had
taken root all across Europe during the 16th century
(and of which our first CD contained many beautiful examples) came to be superseded by the graceful
8

With very few exceptions, there was no music written
for flute ensemble after 1727 when Boismortier published his concertos for five flutes.

Notwithstanding the composition of some beautiful parts for the flute right up to the1650s5, the Renaissance flute may not have survived much beyond
this decade. By the 1660s cylindrical flutes seem to
have fallen into disuse. In the late 1670s Marc-Antoine Charpentier called for transverse flutes ('fl[ute]
allem[ande]') in several pieces and in 1681 Lully required a transverse flute in his ballet Le Triomphe de
l'Amour. There can be little doubt that these flutes
were already the new conical model of flute that, according to Michel de la Barre, had been invented by
the Hotteterre family sometime after 16706. And there
is no doubt at all that these new 'baroque flutes' had
completely superseded the cylindrical ones by the turn
of the 18th century.

I'd like to dedicate this recording to all my students of the Renaissance flute, especially those whom I
meet today as colleagues.
Kate Clark

1

See the last page of this booklet.
See for example the roles for melody instruments in sacred vocal works of Heinrich Schütz (1586-1672), Johann
Hermann Schein (1586-1630), Tobias Michael (15921657), and Sebastian Knüpfer (1633-1676).
3
A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke,
p. 196.
4
See a very clear explanation of the possible influences
in Daniel Pickering Walker, "The influence of musique
mesurée à l'antique, particularly on the airs de cour of the
early seventeenth century", in Musica Disciplina, vol. 2
(1948), pp. 141-163.
5
Sebastian Knüpfer wrote his Ach Herr Strafe mich nicht
for vocal ensemble accompanied by strings with marvelous obbligato parts for flutes and trumpets in 1652.
6
Peter Holman, "From Violin Band to Orchestra" and
Nancy Hadden, "The Renaissance Flute in the Seventeenth Century", in Jonathan P. Wainwright and Peter
Holman (eds), From Renaissance to Baroque. Change in
Instruments and Instrumental Music in the Seventeenth
Century, 2005, p. 113 and 253 respectively.
2

However, the practice of rendering Airs de Cour
on transverse flutes did not die out: a whole suite of
Airs de Cour by Boësset, Lambert, Bacilly and Lully
himself were transcribed into keys suitable for the
new conical flutes and adorned with florid 'doubles'
by Jacques Hotteterre in his 1721 publication of Airs
et Brunettes. For those of us who have played Airs de
Cour from a century earlier and marvelled at their
beauty in instrumental renditions, the survival of
this pairing of airs with flutes at the beginning of the
18th century is a sweet reminder of an almost forgotten practice.
We conclude the recording with a little bracket of
a fanfare and two songs for three flutes by Hotteterre,
and one of Boismortier's Sonates à quatre parties.
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